Saturday, October 31, 2009

Scouting Saturday: Popcorn, Arrow of Light

Okay, so I didn't have time yesterday to post about scouts. I was chasing around, picking up our popcorn orders, all kinds of fun.
My kids did okay selling popcorn. William gets to go to camp this summer. Connor should be able to as well. And we will have to talk about Thomas -- it is possible that he could do Webelos residence camp, and be the first one in the family to do that. So, all in all, it was a good popcorn season. It will be really nice to have things completely delivered and not have to think about it at all anymore.

The bigger scouting news, of course, was that William was showered with stuff at Monday night's pack meeting. The important one was Arrow of Light. The cubmaster said all kinds of really nice things about him, and that really made William uncomfortable.

William can be so black & white. As his leader is talking about William really exemplifying the scout law, William is shifting around a bit. Afterwards, he told me that this stuff just isn't true. I was trying really hard not to laugh at him when he gave his examples though.

He said something like: "A scout is clean, that's part of the law, and I'm NOT clean. My hands are always dirty, I hate to take a shower. He wasn't telling the truth."
If you read my post on Monday, and his comments about washing his hair made before the meeting, you can understand my amusement at his comments.

The other big news was that Connor went for his Scoutmaster conference. He got himself scheduled for a Board of Review next week, November 9, and at that point he should make Star. That's a pretty big deal too.

And something that happened in his conference was that the Scoutmaster went over the Life requirements... and since we had to replace Connor's book (a little sister who shall remain nameless, likes tearing pages out of his book) and purchased the new one with the brand new rank requirements, his scoutmaster got to actually see the new Life requirements for the first time.
And he got excited.

The new Life requirement states:
While a Star Scout, use the EDGE method to teach a younger Scout the skills from ONE of the following six choices, so that he is prepared to pass those requirements to his unit leader's satisfaction.

(Followed by a list of first aid, outdoor, cooking and camping skills from Second Class and First Class requirements)

So that doesn't sound all that exciting. But turning back to page 53, you find out what in the world EDGE is:

Explain how it is done

Demonstrate the steps

Guide learners as they practice

Enable them to succeed on their own

Doesn't that sound great? We're actively teaching these kids how to teach others.